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The Wright Brothers are very famous; pretty much everybody knows them. Not many people knew that they were pretty famous around the area when they made bikes. Now they’re famous all over the United States for making the first airplane.

This is about achievements not popularity so forget about how famous they were. They didn’t make very many achievements with bikes but they made a ton with the airplanes. Just like any other inventor they made tons of mistakes, just about 200 planes they made didn’t work. Basically they just made a biplane glider then they put a real small, lightweight engine and propeller. Sometimes it was the glider that didn’t work and sometimes it was the engine. The engine might have been too heavy or it didn’t work. They were willing to fail so nothing stopped them. Once they made about 200 airplanes they finally made one that worked well. They flew it at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina which is why people call the first plane “Kitty Hawk”. It flew 852 ft. in one minute: their longest/best flight ever.

Now they also had a childhood, they weren’t just born great inventors. If you didn’t know the Wright Bros. names here they are: Wilbur and Orville. Wilbur was born in 1867 and Orville was born in 1871. Surprisingly they were born in different states. Neither of them had any mentors, and Orville even went to an honors class like QUEST! He took special subjects other than a prescribed course for his last year at school. They were really more interested in bikes than they were anything else during their school days; they built a bike shop when they got older and like I said earlier they were pretty famous around that area for making bikes. They even didn’t go to college. So, people were shocked when they built the first airplane and they found out that neither of them went to college.

The Wright Bros. were a very good pair and together they built the first successful airplane. Wilbur died in 1912 from typhoid fever. He was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans in New York City in 1955. Orville retired from the Wright Company in 1915. Orville died in 1948, and Orville got into the same hall of fame in 1965. The Wright Bros. pushed aviation to the limits and opened the gates for aviation.